Ok, when you say enterprise I specifically think SAP (as I've done way too much to be healthy) and Oracle Apps/Siebel/Peoplesoft etc. Just thought I'd clarify b

Ok, when you say enterprise I specifically think SAP (as I've done way too much to be healthy) and Oracle Apps/Siebel/Peoplesoft etc. Just thought I'd clarify before I start. The singular biggest problem with enterprise software is it's complexity. If your project is so big that you don't have a network diagram because the best you can do is a concept block diagram, your software failed. If it's because it uses dynamic routing and you can forecast information flows, your software failed. If it's because it takes a large amount of data, analyses it to generate more data, which is then fed back for further analysis and so on, then your software failed. Because of the complexity when you start looking under the hood some really bad things start dropping out. I'm talking attack ships on fire off the shoulder of orion bad here. Tears in rain and suchlike. In other words, your way of dealing with the app from developing it's own consciousness and trying to take over the world is something stupid like a 4 year lifespan. Classic real world example I see time and time again: Thick client uses a hard coded database login to connect directly to a server, then compares user entered login and password against reference table stored in clear text. I've seen this twice in the past year alone, it's always enterprise (although once I saw it in a security product). Fail, fail, fail. These two add to the third cardinal sin of enterprise software, they're built for particular types of process and never quite fit the business case or structure that acquired these technologies. A large charitable foundation we worked for went to buy SAP after being told they could customise it. In order to cut down costs said charitable foundation bought SAP, the tin and asked the consultancy to minimise customisation. What they got was an FI system for a software firm based in Astoria, Germany (seriously, they shipped with all the defaults and no custom profiles). This meant that they had to enter donations as sales of products. All of this adds up to my final bugbear - price. It costs a fortune to buy the software, usually with horrible terms. It costs a fortune to buy the hardware, let alone maintain it (that is if you're allowed to maintain it), a fortune to tailor (badly) to your environment, usually involving insultants who know nothing about your actual business model/structure/processes/policies/people/etc and don't actually care a great deal about it and costs a fortune to fix when it inevitably goes wrong.